Why Most Diets Fail

For all the billions of dollars western society invests in diet strategies, regimens and approaches (some 20 billion a year in the U.S. alone), dieting as a solution has not resulted in high success rates. Approximately one in five people are successful on a new diet program and, approximately two percent of all successful dieters are able to maintain their weight loss three to five years later. In the U.S., an estimated 35 percent of the adult population and 50 percent of the youth population is overweight or obese. An estimated sixteen million Americans are currently diabetic, and the adult onset of Diabetes, which has a link to being overweight, is also at near epidemic proportions.

We can put a man on the moon, but in spite of the almost one trillion dollars spent on diets and diet products over the last 50 years, we seem to be unable to develop a diet program that works for most of the people and that helps them build the habits necessary to keep it off for the rest of their lives.

For almost 20 years we have been researching the key causes of the overweight/obesity problem plaguing modern western society. Many of our findings may surprise you.

If you have been sensitive or frustrated by your weight and appearance and have felt the not-so-subtle discrimination of society's politely unspoken judgment that "there is something wrong with you or with your personal discipline or you would not be overweight," the following will be a real relief to you. You will discover the equal or even greater co-responsible and powerful role your culture and economy has had since your birth in creating, perpetuating and supporting influences so powerful that almost 1/3 of our total population has become overweight or obese and these numbers still continue to grow each year. We believe that you will soon discover that forces outside of yourself have played a far greater role and blame for your condition than you could have ever imagined. In order of importance, here are our opinions about our findings:

1. Technology has so altered the nature and composition of our diets from those of our ancestors and has so reduced the amount of our physical exertion on a daily basis, that radical increase in overweight or obesity has become an inevitability for many.

We eat too many highly processed and refined sugar foods, drink too much alcohol and because of our technology conveniences and advances, we exercise far too little.

2. In western society, there is overwhelming, continuous cultural and social pressure to eat the worst possible foods for maintaining a healthy body weight.

The advertising and entertainment industries have been paid trillions of dollars over the last 70 years to create the maximum cultural and social pressure to sell the very food products and lifestyle patterns that are making us fatter, and in many cases, less healthy.

The Food industries with the most influence and image advertising power are generally the ones producing and distributing the greatest quantity of poor quality foods. These foods are loaded with cheap, refined sugars, unhealthy fats and highly processed grains. They contain low nutrition and high calories. As a result, the media influence over our very attitudes about eating choices is so invasive that we criticize individuals committed to eating a healthier diet (very low refined sugars, healthy fats and unprocessed foods such as fruits, vegetables and whole grains).

A completely legal "conspiracy of coincidence" directly influencing our diet has developed over the years. Food conglomerates seeking higher profits have discovered that our natural inclination toward sugar, fat and easy-to-consume highly processed grains are readily triggered by suggestive advertising campaigns, many of which utilize celebrity endorsements. The subtle messages in these marketing campaigns encourage consumers to not only purchase their products, but also insidiously suggests that "everybody else" is consuming these items. Therefore, you would be considered an outsider if you did not consume those products yourself.

From cradle to an early grave, we receive relentless pressure as well as subtle lifestyle restructuring messages designed to compel us to eat the very foods that not only produce fat, but also will eventually be detrimental to good health.

Changing ones' diet while living in the current culture with all its unhealthy messages and powerful image influences parallels the ordeals of salmon swimming upstream in a raging current. Despite your best efforts, sooner or later you will tire and the overwhelming current will carry you back to where you were.

The influential power of the advertising media is devastating, particularly on impressionable young people building initial life habits. It is currently estimated that teenagers consume almost 50 percent of their caloric intake by eating nearly nutritionally void, refined sugars wrapped in saturated fat and trans-fatty acid laden highly processed junk food. Coincidentally, the World Health Organization recommends we eat no more that five percent of our total caloric intake in refined sugars. The U.S. dietary guidelines (possibly more influenced by sugar lobbyists) suggest we eat no more than ten percent of our total calories in saturated fats.

This completely legal profit-driven "conspiracy of coincidence" that so negatively influences our diets and health, also receives support on a political level. Political alliances are established and firmly maintained to ensure the continued success of the leading food conglomerates. Because the money generated from these conglomerates feeds the entire system, lobbyists fight for them, politicians pass laws to protect them and the government regulatory organizations are not inclined to go after them.

In spite of the societal and personal dangers of the unhealthy norms coming from advertising, those voices that you would expect to be the most vocal advocates for a healthier perspective have been reluctant to take on the powerful special interest groups. Doctors who do few classes in nutrition while in medical school, through their national organizations seldom post strong or sustained demands to the public or government for more accurate food labeling, diet warnings or diet education. Organizations of dietitians and nutritionists standing up to special interest groups seem to have minimal impact.

Even if you are inclined to praise health food stores or health food companies for providing healthy alternatives, a visit to their bakeries will reveal vast and plentiful choices of highly processed, refined sugar-laden foods. Their deli counters often display tempting selections of more high fat, high calorie items than are available at many traditional food stores.

Expecting health food stores to set a higher, more proactive standard of healthy food content and nutritional labeling is currently unrealistic because most are interested solely in meeting the legally required standards of their traditional food store counterparts. If these stores took a serious position about offering alternatives to enhance and support better health choices for their clients and were less focused on their profit margins, they could easily make some essential changes/offerings.

They could demand food producers improve their nutritional labeling to clearly display additional information to assist consumers with vital choices based on high or low glycemic content in foods, which ones contain trans-fatty acids, etc. With the food software now available on the market, they could easily display per serving calories, grams of fat and refined sugars in all their bakery and deli items. This courtesy to their clients would remove the inconvenience of having to use a slide rule to painstakingly calculate what and how much is in each portion they are consuming. Health food stores like traditional food stores and health organizations have not yet demonstrated real leadership or proactively in addressing one of the most prevalent and costly health problems in western society today--- being overweight.

3. Distorted dieting information is routinely utilized by the advertising and entertainment media for the food, drug and quick-buck, fad diet industries.

The advertising and entertainment media and celebrity endorsements cannot be blamed for legally promoting magazines, diet books, pills and other gadgets and in doing so, sensationalizing the diet process by telling consumers what they want to hear to ensure a sale. There is nothing illegal about utilizing attention-grabbing techniques like "lose 10 pounds in three days," "take the exercise in a bottle pill and never have to exercise again," or "eat everything you want and as much as you want and still lose weight with the easy, fast XYZ diet plan".

The public recognizes they are being hyped, that there really is no magic diet pill or magic diet program. The public is aware that programs promising easy, fast results are mirages. But we all secretly hope for such a program to exist and we anticipate that the next new technology will "deliver."

Today, many weight loss programs promise effortless, unsustainable and unsafe results simply to secure a sale. These empty promises promote an atmosphere of unrealistic expectations about the considerable effort and time it realistically takes to obtain both safe and sustainable weight loss results. Consequently, when the bubble of unrealistic expectations bursts as it always does in hyped programs, the individual looses motivation and either quits altogether or seeks another new hyped program, still knowing in their hearts "it's just too good to be true."

This distorted dieting information creates both unrealistic expectations and hidden false standards for judging future diets. When such an individual finally finds an honest and complete diet program, their chances of succeeding are small. They are either impatient with slower, safe results or they are unwilling to put out the tremendous effort and time required to learn and apply all the complex changes necessary to permanently loose fat.

Dieting successfully is one of the most difficult challenges to undertake. Obtaining this goal demands change on multiple levels, including current diet and related eating and exercise health habits. Health specialists have long known that changing poor lifelong dietary and related health habits is one of the most difficult and complex areas to improve.

4. Most Diets lack ALL the critical elements needed for a reasonable hope of success.

Today, the stand-alone diet book approach is popular. Most diet books and many clinic approaches do not address all the critical elements of a successful diet program. These include diet, exercise, psychological aspects, stress management, ongoing motivation, support, habit building skills, maintenance, tune-up tools and establishing a new mini-culture that will help sustain these newly acquired, healthier habits. Without all these elements being present, there is rapidly dwindling hope that any of the simplistic or incomplete diet approaches prevalent today will result in long-term success.

5. The ever-increasing stresses and pace of modern western living is underestimated.

In addition to the previously mentioned diet problems it is becoming increasingly challenging for individuals to maintain and control a correct diet and exercise program and build new habit patterns within the backdrop of our busy modern culture. The hectic pace and constantly changing stresses of contemporary society leaves us with little time for quiet reflection, rest, learning new things or building quality relationships --- particularly our relationship with ourselves for personal health care.

It also is well-documented that for many people, the pleasure of unregulated eating is a significant outlet to combat and compensate for the un-pleasurable quality of the hectic pace and stress levels of their lives. Remove this eating stress release outlet and for many, life quickly becomes unbearable.

6. Previous dieting failures perpetuate and strengthen the cycle of future dieting failures.

Most of today's dieters have been on so many programs they have a library filled with diet materials. This is not just a testament that all of the pieces needed to solve the overweight/dieting problem have seldom been assembled, it also signifies another barrier to success for these individuals.

When individuals repeatedly fail in previous diet programs because of distorted and incorrect diet information, incomplete diet programs themselves, and any combination of the other above factors, unfortunately the next casualty is the lack of proper commitment and positive attitude vital to making the next new dieting attempt work. While they may hope for diet success as they begin a new diet, their past failure experiences become a powerful debilitating self-fulfilling legacy that unconsciously insists "this diet probably won't work either."

The term, "yo-yo diet" comes into play as another side effect of too many failed diets. Yo-yo diets are where the individual initially loses weight, then "yo-yo's" back by regaining it all and then usually some additional pounds. The discouraging truth is that this pattern is potentially more damaging to the body than not dieting at all. Some reap the terrible result of slowing their body's calorie burning metabolism mechanism so that the yo-yo dieter cannot even eat the same amount as before they began the diet without gaining additional weight.

7. Very few diets compensate for the realities of flawed and natural human behavior.

We are not perfect. We seldom "learn it right the first time," nor are we constituted to repeat perfection in any endeavor on a consistent basis. We regularly apply what we learn incorrectly and inconsistently because of the other pressing time and resource demands of our modern western lives. We cheat and we backslide and we grow tired of monotony and detailed rituals of discipline. We are human. Few diet programs address, much less integrate this truth to create a system that gradually gets the job done in spite of behavioral backslides.

Solving the overweight and obesity problem plaguing Western Society

Most dieters are like salmon trying to swim against a relentless current because the findings above cause the dieter to not be able to either do or complete their diet even if they do find one of the few good diet programs currently existing. Any solution to these dieting problems must successfully address all the above issues and contain all of the critical elements necessary for a successful diet program. After almost two decades of research and testing, we believe we have developed one of the few comprehensive, straight-talking programs with a realistic probability of solving the dieting problems mentioned above and delivering safe and lasting weight loss. It is called the Performance Diet.

If you feel that our observations concerning the key causes of the overweight problem plaguing western society are reasonable, we suggest you investigate our program further. Click here to learn more about the Performance Diet.